Description

In the mid-1960s, George Plimpton talked his way into the Detroit Lions’ pre-season training camp and in doing so set the bar for participatory sports journalism. With his characteristic wit, Plimpton recounts his experience of a month practising and living with the team – getting to know the pressures and tensions rookies confront, the hijinks, taking behind the scenes snaps and capturing a host of American football rites and rituals.

Plimpton might not have made it as a quarterback, but fifty years after its first publication, Paper Lion remains one of the most insightful and entertaining classics of sports literature.

Publisher Review

"A continuous feast... The best book ever about football - or anything!" * Wall Street Journal * "A great book that makes football absolutely fascinating to fan and non-fan alike...a tale to gladden the envious heart of every weekend athlete... Plimpton has endless curiosity, unshakable enthusiasm and nerve, and a deep respect for the world he enters" * New York Times * "The agility and imaginativeness of his prose transforms his account of this daydream into a classic of sports reporting" * New Yorker * "Possibly the most arresting and delightful narrative in all of sports literature" * Book Week * "With his gentle, ironic tone, and unwillingness to take himself too seriously, along with Roger Angell, John Updike and Norman Mailer he made writing about sports something that mattered." * Guardian *